


Flower Language

by airdeari, crashkeys (Tempo), Izzyv1o



Series: self-indulgent aoilight within [7]
Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, and also just bad relationships, bad relationships with medication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 14:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11716383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/pseuds/airdeari, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempo/pseuds/crashkeys, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzyv1o/pseuds/Izzyv1o
Summary: After his mission fails, Dio begins a downward spiral that leads to his inevitable demise and—nah, I'm just kidding, it's just more friggin aoilightA story originally live-written in a Google Doc out of spite by airdeari with invaluable suggestions from Izzyv1o and crashkeys inspired when Sunquail's flight was delayed one stressful evening.





	1. Forget-Me-Nots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sunquail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunquail/gifts).



> sssso I actually formatted this really nicely for AO3 publishing (please don't disable my work skin it only shows up in a few places and it's so worth it!!!!!!) and now I can't decide whether this is more fun to read here or in the Google Doc with all of Snow & Beth's contributions. If you want some laughs on this dramatic tale (and you have no positive feelings about Dio or Dio/Luna that will be hurt by our running gag) go with the Google Doc. If you'd like to take this seriously, gay boys are serious business, proceed as usual. But here's the Google Doc link.
> 
>  
> 
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1GIy26rkeMojp-9B_BH1z4i4FzY1Qr_EnsT7vIgjKA/edit?usp=sharing>
> 
>  
> 
> This is _technically_ "open to comments" but that's because it's the only way you can see Snow  & Beth's contributions. don't make me have to moderate this thing, y'all. behave. let's have nice things.

“Hey.”

Light lifted his head and raised his eyebrows as if he had not been listening to the sounds of Aoi puttering about the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen for the past hour.

“I’m heading out for a little while,” Aoi sighed.

“Heading where?” Light asked.

“Japan. Business stuff.”

It could have been five seconds or five minutes before Light startled back to reality to the sound of an extending rollerboard suitcase handle, and the subsequent wheels grinding across the floor.

“How…” Light’s voice did not come on the first try. “For how long?”

“Not sure yet. I’ll be out of your hair a week, at least,” Aoi mumbled. He cracked his neck. “Till then.”

“Till then,” Light repeated numbly. “Safe travels.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

The front door opened and shut seconds later, and then the apartment was quiet, dark, and still.

 

“He didn’t even _tell_ you?”

Her voice was strident in his ears when she raised it in alarm. Wincing, Light muttered, “I’m sure it was something sudden.”

“You don’t _suddenly_ go on a business trip to Japan,” she shot back.

“If you’re the twenty-five-year-old CEO of your own brokerage that’s also a front for a vigilante crime syndicate, maybe you _do_ suddenly go on a business trip to Japan,” Light retorted. He felt like his face was melting into his hand.

“Well, then maybe you buy a plane ticket for your boyfriend and don’t just leave him out to dry while you up and disappear for a month!”

“A _week_ , Clover. And the phrase isn’t—”

“Has he texted you?”

Her voice was suddenly closer, and the table was leaning away from his elbow. She was poised over the table as if ready to jump at him, cheeks likely puffed out.

“He has _not_ texted me,” Light replied, “because he only just left, and he is either still in transit or working through the horrendous charade that is security at American airports.”

“He has a _private jet_.”

“No, he _rented_ a private jet for the purposes of kidnapping several Japanese residents and transporting them to Nevada without arousing suspicion. Honestly, Clover, do you know how expensive and environmentally irresponsible it would be to own and use a private jet every time you had to make a flight?”

“Yeah, _I_ know,” Clover groaned, “but maybe your stupid boyfriend and his stupid business don’t know that.”

Light ran his finger over the rim of his near-empty mug of honey-chamomile tea. He felt no calmer than he had before brewing it.

“That would honestly be a dealbreaker for us,” he realized.

“Oh my God.” Clover slammed her fists against the table and sank down in her seat. “He ditches you for a week to go to Japan without warning, fine. He takes a private jet to do it, it’s over.”

“I am a man of simple morals, Clover.”

“You’re a dummy. You’re the smartest dummy I know.”


	2. Clover

As adoring an audience as she was, Clover was woefully unaware of musical and performance cues. She never knew when a song was over, and she stopped Light when he was clearly pausing between movements of newly memorized repertoire to interject, “So when’s Aoi coming back?”

Light pressed his face against the pointed shoulder of his harp. It had been five days since Aoi’s sudden departure, and still he seemed to be the only thing Clover wanted to talk about. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “He was vague with the timing.”

“Well, is he gonna let you know or is he just gonna show up?” Clover asked. Her knees and feet made soft noises against the couch as she kicked her legs, likely lying on her stomach.

“I presume he’ll let me know, since he may otherwise find himself facing a locked door,” Light muttered.

Clover scrambled upright with immediate interest. “Oh my God, are we changing the locks on the door?” she squealed. “Let’s do it. I’ll pitch in. Let’s go.”

“Clover, he doesn’t _have_ a key to the apartment.” He had borrowed a spare from time to time, but never taken it, and Light had found it still on the hook after he departed. “That wasn’t a threat, just a statement of fact. If we aren’t present, he won’t be able to get in. No malice intended.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun.”

She slumped back down in her seat, and silence settled again as Light raised his hands to his harp. In his head, he replayed the final passages of the previous movement, fingers twitching as he subconsciously mimicked the motions of the grander chords he had played. Just as he had settled back into the mood, set his hands back down on his lap, and began to prepare for the next movement, she spoke again.

“What’s he up to, anyway?”

“Business,” Light said tersely.

“What, is it _so_ top-secret he can’t even tell you about it?” she scoffed.

“It could also just be too terribly boring to even bother telling me.”

“He hasn’t told you anything?”

She almost sounded disappointed. Light shook his head.

“Oh, my God, has he texted you at _all_?” Clover whined. “Do you even know he landed in Japan safe or is there still a chance his plane got hijacked and he crash-landed on a remote island in the Pacific and now he’s struggling to survive?!”

Light was reluctant to answer this question, because he anticipated Clover’s response. His beat of hesitation spoke the truth more rapidly than words could have.

“Oh my gosh.” Her hands pounded against the armrest. “He hasn’t texted you. He literally hasn’t spoken to you since he walked out of here with his suitcase and told you he didn’t know when he’d be back.”

“He’s on business, Clover,” Light insisted, as if that made it any better. He had been holding onto that excuse and repeating it, convincing himself that it was a viable excuse, and Clover was about to make it clear that it was not.

She made that and several other things clear.

“I don’t care _how_ many stupid jobs and fake-real companies he’s running and pretending to run or whatever!” she shouted. “It takes five seconds, Light! _Five seconds._ Take out his phone, pick an emoji, hit send. Done! That’s it, done! That’s _all_ he needs to do to just, I dunno, prove he’s still alive, even! Maybe even that he’s thinking of you at _all_ for the past week, y’know?! Prove he’s actually where he says he is and not off in Las Vegas doing—I dunno, having—oh my gosh, he’s having an affair. That’s what this is, Light, he’s having an affair.”

“Clover, he would have to be married to be having an affair.”

“He could be cheating on you! That’s what this looks like, Light!”

“That’s not at all what this looks like,” Light said, even as his lip was twitching. “This looks like the behavior of someone very busy who can tell me all about his adventures when he returns.”

“Light, listen. Okay? Seriously listen. I’m not joking now.”

Light curled his fingers around the taut treble strings, feeling them dig into the pads of his fingertips as he gripped tighter.

“Listen, this isn’t okay, okay? It’s making you upset, and it’s a mean thing to do, anyways, if you’re supposed to be in a relationship or whatever. You don’t just drop out unannounced for a whole week, and then—”

“He announced his departure,” Light corrected.

“Light!” she groaned. “You’re _upset_ , okay? And you’re totally in the right to be upset right now. He’s not talking to you.”

Light slumped back from the harp, rubbing his toes along the pedals through the threadbare wool of old socks.

“Like, for real? I wanna tell you to break up with him over this, that’s how bad it is. But… I know you like him a lot,” she said softly. “But so you _have_ to tell him this made you mad. You gotta tell him this isn’t okay, because you deserve better, and if you’re gonna keep sticking around with him, then he’s gotta be better for you.”

“It’s quite a stretch to say this made me mad,” Light mumbled. “It’s really inconsequential, Clover. There’s no need to make such a fuss about—”

“Oh my God! No! Stop!”

Light accidentally bit his tongue when a pillow startled him by flying into his face.

“Stop pretending you don’t have feelings, you big stupid! I know you better than that!”

He sighed, and gave a broken smile, and then held his face in his hands to hide it when he felt sure that it did not quite look right. “Alright, alright,” he said. “Please don’t throw any more pillows. You know how easily this harp gets out of tune if you knock it.”

“Then why are they called throw pillows, huh?”

Light jumped off of the stool and darted across the room as soon as he heard Clover’s arm rustling with another round of ammunition. She yelped in dismay, but then her feet hit the ground, and the chase was on. They had been living in the apartment for long enough that Light knew how to use its layout to his advantage. He ducked into the kitchen until he heard the first pillow hit the wall, then shot back out towards the bedrooms. There was no way he would be able to reach the couch before Clover had used the last of their supply, nor without sustaining heavy damage.

“No fair!” Clover shouted after him as she raced him down the short hall to his bedroom, her socks sliding along the hardwood floors. “Those aren’t throw pillows! Those are regular pillows!”

“No, it’s a _sham_ ,” Light called back with a devilish sneer.

But Light never kept his bed made when Aoi was not around, and he had no memory of where on the floor or collapsed onto Aoi’s pile of things the pillow shams might have fallen, and by the time he reached the pillow at the end of his bed, Clover was already tearing into his room with a war cry, and he soon felt the vicious beatings of a small couch pillow upon his back. She pummeled him into submission onto his bed, then subdued him by wrapping her arms around him.

“You’re my prisoner now,” she teased. “I sentence you to a thousand years of hugs. ’Cuz I love you even if your stupid boyfriend doesn’t.”

“Clover, please, I’m fine.”

“Shh.” She squeezed him tighter. “No pretending you don’t have feelings, remember?”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Well, promise me you’ll text him,” she sniffed. “You even have an excuse. You can be like, ‘hey, did your plane crash five days ago and you’re dead now or what’ and then he’ll be obligated to respond and you’ll get to make him feel guilty and that’ll make me happy.”

Light chuckled softly. “There is the possibility he doesn’t have international service on his phone and he hasn’t been using it for that reason,” he pointed out. “Then who will be guilty?”

“Still him, for not telling you!” Clover retorted. “Give him roaming charges, who cares. He’s rich, and he deserves to pay it for being a big ole meanie. Text him, okay?”

“Okay,” Light said.

For some reason or other, of course, Light did not text him.


	3. Grapevine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JUST KIDDING THIS IS NOW MY PREFERRED MEDIUM TO READ THE STORY IN CHECK OUT THESE STYLINGS
> 
> (read up about these styles here!! <https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845/chapters/14729722>)

In fact, Clover ended up texting Aoi before Light did, though only after a week had come and gone with no sign of him. Light had been so stiff and unhappy during their last conversation that she resisted the urge to constantly ask him whether or not he had heard from Aoi. She took matters into her own hands to sate her curiosity.

known shitters  
  
**little shit** are u dead

After getting no response for several hours, she swiped through her contacts and tried a different approach.

 

junpe  
  
**clove** where is he  
where is that little boy

Junpei picked up his phone after it buzzed the second time and smirked at the incoming messages. He opened the front-facing camera and copied her pose—shot at a forty-five degree angle, with a random object in her mouth (in Junpei’s case, a nearby wooden ladle was his safest option), and holding up a peace sign next to her cheek.

There was definitely something more to it. Junpei examined the photo he had snapped and found himself looking into the face of some sort of hideous demon, no matter what filter he layered over it. He deleted the photo and slipped into the bathroom to reattempt the selfie with the tried-and-true mirror shot. After cropping out the clutter on the counter by the sink, he fired off the picture to Clover.

junpe  
  
**clove** where is he  
where is that little boy  
**junpe**  
[](http://orig10.deviantart.net/f11f/f/2017/217/9/a/junpe_by_asplodedkeruri-dbizrbq.png)  
**clove** oh my god not you  
wheres aoi?????  
**junpe** clover i just want to say i have never felt so betrayed in my life  
and my closest childhood friend once kidnapped me and put me in a nonary game where i think i died five times or something and she lied to my face about it for nine hours so like  
just think about that. think about what youve done.  
but yeah he and akane are still doing whatever the fuck in japan. idk.  
**clove** oh wait ur still in america???  
lonely junpei.... are u eating takeout for dinner every night....  
**junpe** i will have you know i am boiling a pot of gourmet water for my pasta right now, like a respectable 23 year old man who knows how to cook  
**clove** what kind of pasta

Junpei paused, staring at the package.

junpe  
  
**junpe** noodles  
**clove** what kinddddd of noodles  
like maybeeeee  
fried dehydrated noodles in individual packets  
**junpe** ok its ramen yes shut up

 

It was another two days before Aoi responded to Clover’s text.

known shitters  
  
**little shit** are u dead  
**Today** 4:05 AM  
**huge turd** no  
**little shit** not yet**  
**Today** 11:47 AM  
**huge turd** true  
**little shit** where are you!!!!!!!  


He did not respond again.

“You heard anything?” Clover finally asked over dinner (which, without Aoi, was takeout, of course).

She did not need to give any context. Light shrugged and twirled his finger around the straw of his iced tea. They had forgotten to specify that he liked it unsweetened and he barely drank half of it as a result. He was sad in his quiet way, more disappointed than angry. The general malaise of his depressive episodes had settled into his bones and tired out his face.

And he did not want to talk about it.

Clover held rigid, eyes wide, replaying the moments when Aoi’s chat nickname crossed the screen of her phone. He had texted her without texting Light.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she uttered.

“Clover, please,” Light sighed, rolling his eyes. “This isn’t a conversation I would want to have via text message from opposite sides of the globe, anyway. We’ll talk when he returns.”

“But he—!”

“Clover.” Light shoved his iced tea away. “I _don’t_ want to talk about this.”

He pushed his chair out from the table and shifted his weight as a threat to leave. It was how he dealt with anything that made him upset when he would rather not care about it. He quarantined himself from the unpleasant thoughts in public, yet in the privacy of his mind, he would brood over it for lonely hours.

Breathing hard with anger, Clover held her tongue until she was calm enough to say, “I’ll drink your iced tea if you’re not gonna.”

Light nudged it closer to her, with a twitch of a smile in the right corner of his lips as she grabbed it off the table and slurped.

She knew he was right that this needed to be resolved in person and she should stop trying to resolve it before Aoi’s business trip was over, but she still had to fire off one last text.

known shitters  
  
**little shit** where are you!!!!!!!  
**Today** 8:31 PM  
**little shit** you are an evil little man and i hate you  



	4. Madder

Akane folded her hands over her stomach as she lay on her back and watched the ceiling of the hotel room with half-open eyes. Black. Blue. Black. Blue.

“Aoi,” she said sternly.

She got a groan from the other side of the bed. The sheets tugged at her legs and shoulder, where she had tucked the edges underneath herself in hopes of keeping them through the night without having them stolen by a greedy hoarder.

“Aoi, your phone is flashing and I’m going to throw it across the room if you don’t deal with it in the next ten seconds.”

She counted them out, and he must have, too, because he only started reaching his hand out towards the side table after the eighth second.

The light of the screen flooded the room. Akane shut her eyes and waited for the moment to pass, for the insomnia to pass.

“Fucking… goddamn fucking emojis in the fucking,” Aoi muttered, and then he threw his own phone against the wall—more of a gentle toss than the one Akane was threatening—and shoved his head face-first into the pillow.

“Text from America?” Akane asked, sliding her eyes open to peer at her brother.

“Little shit,” he grumbled. “Fuckin’ little shit. Don’t even know what the fuck it fuckin’ says, fuckin’…”

He had not been himself since they arrived. He was quiet, sometimes irritable, sometimes almost shy.

No, lately, he _had_ been himself. He had been himself from two years ago.

When the second Nonary Game was only a month away and his sister’s life was on the line because of circumstances outside his control, he had turned into the same shell of himself he was becoming again, drifting and detaching from everything and everyone but his task and his purpose.

“It means she misses you,” Akane said softly.

Aoi did not stir.

As Akane was giving the hotel room the final once-over the next morning to make sure they left nothing behind before checking out, she found his phone still lying on the carpet next to the wall he had thrown it at last night. When she handed it to him with a stern gaze, he did not meet her eyes. Rather than pocket it, he unzipped a corner of his suitcase and shoved it deep inside.

honorary sisters  
  
**honorary big sister** if you’re trying to contact aoi you may be better off going through me or light  
**honorary little sister** he hasnt talked to my brother at all since he left >:////  


Akane let out a heavy sigh, holding her phone to her chest.

“You alright?” Aoi mumbled, staring out the train window.

“You’re a disaster,” she said.

His eyes bounced back and forth as he followed the approaching signs for the station they were pulling into. “We’re the stop after this,” he said.

honorary sisters  
  
**honorary big sister** if you’re trying to contact aoi you may be better off going through me or light  
**honorary little sister** he hasnt talked to my brother at all since he left >:////  
**honorary big sister** this is going to be hard for everyone but i think i need him to learn this lesson for himself instead of nagging him to do something he evidently doesn’t want to do of his own volition. i hope you can understand 

Seventeen days after Aoi had left the apartment almost unannounced and said he would be gone for about a week, Clover got another text from Akane. The message loaded before the photo.

honorary sisters  
  
**honorary big sister** he is incorrigible. i’m sorry  
[](http://orig03.deviantart.net/ada8/f/2017/217/f/7/dissaoiciation_by_asplodedkeruri-dbj0e96.png)

The photo was of Aoi slumped on a couch, missing Akane’s phone camera pointed at him while lost in a vacant gaze. Clover recognized the couch, and her mouth shot open. She barely held in her scream of rage, only because in that instant, she had hatched a plot to give Aoi the guilt trip of his life.


	5. Hollyhock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay here's where it starts being more fun to read the Google Doc honestly (because i have no more texts to display lmao). If you want to switch over, the chapter titles are in the sidebar (along with some asides that we increased the font size of for laughs).
> 
> [ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1GIy26rkeMojp-9B_BH1z4i4FzY1Qr_EnsT7vIgjKA/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1GIy26rkeMojp-9B_BH1z4i4FzY1Qr_EnsT7vIgjKA/edit?usp=sharing)
> 
> Remember to behave in there~!

When Aoi got this text from Clover, he actually noticed it, because he could finally take his phone off silent and bumped it up to vibrate. He took his phone out the second he felt it buzz in his pocket, desperate for something to distract him from the sweet talk in the kitchen.

Clover had sent him a video.

It took ages to load, and the quality was grainy as hell even when it had buffered, but he saw exactly what she wanted him to see.

_“Oh my gosh, Light, I just got a text from Akane, I think they’re finally back in the States!”_

Light’s head shot up. His eyelids fluttered, he inhaled deeply.

_“Oh… wait… I think he’s… at Junpei’s and Akane’s right now? Why would he…?”_

Aoi watched the devastating drop play out on Light’s face. His shoulders sank, his face fell, and then, as he always did, he tried to rein it back inside himself, to smooth over the hurt feelings with a mask.

Then, the mask twitched, and he raised his face to Clover, and therefore to the camera.

_“Clover, are you taking a video of—”_

Aoi switched off his phone and shoved it away from him, between the couch cushions, anything to hide it from sight and get it as far away from him as possible. He curled in on himself on that corner of the couch he had claimed, feeling sick and small and stupid.

He had opened his phone when he landed in Japan, swiped over to Light’s conversation, and pulled up the keyboard, and thought about how little it mattered, how it was late in America and how it might wake Light in the middle of the night if he had left his sound on.

He opened his phone the next day and opened the camera, then cursed himself out for being a fucking idiot thinking of sending a picture of the city to his blind boyfriend, and he shoved his phone in his pocket and hated himself for the rest of the day.

On his third day in Japan he pulled out his phone again and stared at the empty text prompt for fifteen minutes, thinking of what he could possibly say that even meant anything. He and Akane had secured most of the intelligence for the first part of their infiltration, but that was business as usual. He was tired. That was also usual. Light was tired, too, probably. Tired of a lot of bullshit, maybe.

On the fourth day he knew it had been too long, and Light had not said anything either, and Aoi thought of fire in the worst possible ways as the phrase _burning bridges_ looped over and over in his head and he thought about going back to how it had been before the second Nonary Game, when he transformed himself from a living, breathing young man into a perpetual motion machine, an automaton dedicated only to work, trusting no one, wanting nothing. He had not been happier then. He did not know what it mattered whether or not he was happy. He wanted to go back to when he was too busy to have feelings.

On the fifth day, he turned back into that lifeless something.

It had taken him days to respond to Clover’s text because it came on the day they visited their old neighborhood and after that it was hard for him to realize that she was still real. Or perhaps that was the only reason he was able to respond at all, because she was just a jumble of letters and emojis on a screen and nothing meant anything and no one loved him enough to care what happened here.

He had burned his bridge to Light Field, because it was all doomed to fall apart someday, and why not run away while everything was numb.

But it still hurt when he watched that video and saw what he had done.

No, it had not hurt _him_. It had hurt _Light_.


	6. Peonies

Aoi found himself facing a locked door regardless of whether or not Clover and Light had elected to change their locks, because it was eleven-thirty-three at night when he arrived at the apartment building and the vestibule electronically locked after eight.

When the buzzer sounded from the speaker next to the Fields’ front door, both started, then jumped to their feet. Light gave Clover a dirty look when he heard her toes hit the floor.

“I’m going, too!” she protested, but Light could hear the devious smile in her voice.

“You are _not_ ,” he ordered firmly, grabbing the spare key set from the hook by the door.

“C’mon, Light, you’re just gonna forgive him and pretend like nothing’s wrong if I don’t—”

“Stay here,” he snapped.

When the door slammed shut, Clover wondered if perhaps he was not going to forgive, and that made her want to follow him downstairs even more.

When Light shoved open the door, no one spoke. The muggy air drifted up to his face and stuck to his skin as he read the gentle silence of street lights humming, bugs chattering, a lonely car from a street away. He would not have known who was standing before him had he not recognized the timbre of that hard, heavy breathing.

“Aoi,” he said.

 

Aoi still could not speak, and that was not because he had run about three blocks to Light’s apartment with his suitcase slung over his back since he could not get into the underground parking without a key fob and that was the closest spot he could find on the street without a meter, not that it would matter if Light turned him away at the door, which was an idea that had sprouted from the pit of his stomach as soon as he set eyes upon Light’s carefully composed face.

He felt its vines creeping up his throat when Light said his name.

It was the same as when he opened his phone and stared at the empty space where he knew words should go. There was nothing he could say that was right, nothing he could say that would matter. Despite the disgusting humidity of a northeastern summer hanging in the air, his mouth dried out as he hung it open and waited for words to come out.

“Aoi?” Light said again, furrowing his brow.

Aoi gave a jolt, and then the eloquent word that broke two and a half weeks of silence was a stuttered, “Uh,” and he could not even manage to follow that up with a “Yeah, it’s me,” or something.

“Are you going to come inside?”

Light stood back from the doorway, propping the door open with an extended left arm. He was wearing his prosthetic still, despite the late hour, and somehow he seemed a stranger sight with it on, as though he was not at ease. There was something unspoken lurking behind his lips, an emotion unexpressed in his eyes, and it was dark.

Aoi blinked, and it was gone. He blinked again, and it was there.

“This door starts emitting the most grating alarm if I hold it open for too long,” Light reminded him gently.

Aoi wanted to tell him to shut it in his face but he had also left all of his medications in Light’s apartment while he was in Japan and he was starting to realize he desperately needed probably all of them.

 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and shuffled inside. Light heard a bulky bag bouncing against his back and stepped further out of the doorway to make way.

It was hard to say whether he was apologizing for hesitating in the doorway or trying to apologize for disappearing without a word for over half a month, but at least he had said something at all.

At least he had come back.

 

“How was your trip?” he asked quietly, and that sent Aoi’s spinning head into a downward spiral.

He had misread everything. The video was too grainy when he watched it on his phone, none of that emotion he had imagined in Light’s face was real. Light had not missed him, and it was all rather annoying that he had decided to come back at all. He should have stayed with his sister and left Light alone instead of showing up unannounced at nearly midnight, forcing Light downstairs with no shoes or socks, his hair disheveled, his eyes weary, so weary, so very tired of Aoi’s goddamn bullshit.

“Sorry,” he uttered again. “Sorry, I just—I need my fucking meds, I’m gonna fucking—”

And the nervous energy hit his legs, and he bolted forward, away from Light, up the stairs to run in and run out and get the fuck back out of here before he fucked things up even worse and he could just leave Light alone with some peace and quiet again.

He heard Light call his name, maybe, it could have been all in his head with the way it echoed through the stairwell underneath the sound of his pounding feet and bouncing suitcase that he wanted to fucking throw out the window to listen to the noise that the glass made as it splintered into a thousand shards and everything he owned hit the ground below.

Clover snapped her head up, eyes ablaze with the anger that had burned in those angry messages she had sent to him while he was away, when he burst through the door to their peaceful little world that he had no goddamn place in, and he wished he could make every trace of him disappear from it, burning bridges, burning bridges, watching all those stupid marks he had left in this perfect happy apartment flare up and evaporate into smoke just like _she_ did all those years ago, burning bridges, burning everything, burning himself, burning, burning, burning, burning.

Everything was looping in his head, so he probably needed the OCD meds to turn that off, but his chest was like fire, burning, burning, burning, burning, burning, and that meant anti-anxiety meds should probably come first, and the notion that maybe he should take unscrew the bottles and chug them both meant that he probably needed the antidepressants, and _God_ he was sick with the sensation of it, absolutely craving the fantasy of feeling all those pills fill up his mouth and slide down his throat, cold and small with all kinds of different bumpy edges along his tongue, starting to dissolve as they waited patiently for their turn to kill him with their poisonous bouquet of—

“ _Fuck,_ ” he growled, and he slammed closed the medicine cabinet that he did not even remember opening—had he already taken a pill? how many pills? was that perfect feeling of the little pills clogging his throat real or imagined?—and turned around, only to find Light standing right behind him.

He looked so much like a phantom that for a moment, Aoi was not even sure if he was real, or just an apparition of his guilt to hang at the edges of his vision until death.

“I forgot the fucking—I’ll be—”

He did not finish his sentences, but maybe he was talking to a fucking ghost, anyway, so what did it really matter.

 

Clover watched in wide-eyed awe as Aoi raced out the door again. She stared at her brother as he drifted into the room, face pointed towards the half-open door.

“You better not run after him,” she whispered.

Light’s lips twitched, and then he strode to the door. Clover scowled as he disappeared into the outside hall.

 

He had to move quickly. If he lost track of the sound of Aoi’s footsteps, he would lose Aoi.

It was not so much that he had chosen to follow, it was more that he could not commit to the choice of losing him to the night.

 

Three blocks of running later, Aoi slammed his hand on the window of his car to stop his momentum, his whole throat raw with the taste of iron. He yanked on the car door, found it locked, dug his hand into his pocket, pressed the unlock button on his keys, heard the soft click, yanked on the door again, found it still locked, remembered he was in fucking America and he was trying to open the passenger side door so he needed to hit the unlock button twice to open that one, did that, heard a louder click, and yanked open the door.

“Aoi,” Light called breathlessly.

Aoi jumped about a foot in the air at the sound of his voice, letting out a loud, “Fuck!” and a softer, “Don’t fuckin’ sneak up on me like—why the fuck are you—fuck, you weren’t supposed to—fuck. Fuck. I’m sorry. Fuck. This is…”

With a rustle of plastic, he pulled from the passenger seat what he had forgotten to bring inside.

“This is—”

Aoi’s voice cracked and he swallowed, and he had to shift his weight to stay balanced, and the smell was stronger than he remembered when he held it near his face.

“I don’t—maybe this is all just bullshit, I don’t know how to—I just fuckin’ Googled it, I dunno, but I couldn’t just—these are—”

With his words failing him again, he thrust out the bouquet into Light’s chest.

“It’s—peonies, it’s for… it said it was—the pink ones are for ‘shame’ or something like that, because I c-couldn’t—couldn’t find one that just meant ‘I’m sorry’ and I didn’t wanna do just roses, that’s—that’s just—and—I dunno, should I’ve done roses? I don’t—the pink ones are—”

His hand was shaking before his eyes as he lifted it to sift through the flowers.

“The pink ones are for… yeah, and the red ones mean… fuck, I’m gonna throw up. I’m gonna fucking puke.”

Light gave a small twitch. “Sit down,” he said. “Lower your head between your legs.”

Aoi practically collapsed backwards against the side of his car, and slid awkwardly into the passenger seat, legs hanging tangled out of the open door. His eyes could not focus, and every pounding heartbeat blurred his vision further. Peonies smelled fucking awful and that was the only thing he could breathe, fucking peonies, why did he pick peonies when they _smelled_ like that.

“You said earlier you needed medicine,” Light said. “Did you—”

Filling his mouth, bloating his cheeks with their little shapes, swallowing them down like magic, like a satisfying little funnel into his stomach where they would dissolve and flood him with so many artificial feelings until he fucking died, what if he fucking died right in front of Light Field, crammed all of those tiny little pills inside of him, swirling them around like little pearls with his tongue, died in front of Light Field just to see what he would do, if he would care.

“Fuck. Don’t. No. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, no.”

Light leaned away from him, his face tense. He had nothing more to say.

Although Aoi had broken down in front of Light before, it was awful this time, loud and quiet and embarrassing and he wanted to die, and it was because Light was usually so soft and soothing when he got like this, so full of love and comfort, but he was too tired of Aoi’s bullshit to play that role right now.

“Just… fucking hit me or something,” Aoi begged. “Just slap me in the face as hard as you can.”

“Aoi, I’m not going to do that.”

He shoved himself out of the car, still weak on his feet as he stood the perfect distance in front of Light. “Just do it,” he said, his voice growing louder.

“Even if I do, that’s not going to fix what happened here, and I’m not going to give you that easy way out.”

That stung more than a slap would have.

“It’ll make you feel better,” Aoi grumbled. “Just fucking hit me as hard as you hate me right now, okay? Let’s both get this out of our system.”

Light raised his hand. Aoi closed his eyes and braced himself.

His hand was cold, but soft, and so achingly familiar when it cupped his cheek.

“I don’t hate you, Aoi,” Light said softly.

Aoi opened his eyes as his hand slowly drifted away. His face was soft with warmth, perhaps forgiveness, until it gave a twitch as he raised his hand again.

“Now, if I were to hit you as hard as I’m _frustrated_ with you—”

Aoi saw stars.

He took three staggering steps to the opposite side of the pain prickling up in his face. He stayed doubled over, both hands pressed to his cheek, eyes wide as he struggled for sight again.

“Y-y-your left…” was all he managed to say before sliding to the ground, his head reeling.

“Oh.” Light’s voice was close, and had taken on a new quality. “ _Oh_. I… I didn’t…”

“M’okay,” Aoi said, running his tongue along the side of his mouth to check his teeth. “S’fine. M’okay.”

When his vision cleared, Light was hovering over him. “Aoi, I didn’t—I’m so sorry, it didn’t even occur to me that I was—”

“Sh… shut up.” Aoi reached blindly for a grip on the car to bring himself back to his feet. “You don’t… you don’t get to fuckin’ say you’re sorry before I…”

His head sagged with a sudden surge of dizziness. As he closed his eyes for a slow blink, two steady hands took his shoulders.

“Where’s your flowers?” he mumbled. “Where’s your… where’s your…”

His eyes went wide as the ground between their feet came into focus.

“Oh my God,” he blurted. “Oh my God, you’re not wearing shoes. Light, holy fuck.”

Light let his shoulders sag with a sigh, his lips twitching towards a bitter smile.

“Holy shit, get in the fucking car, Light.” Aoi shot himself upright and grabbed Light by the arms. “Sit down and get your fucking feet off the ground. Oh my God.”

“This coming from you,” Light muttered, but he stumbled into the open car at Aoi’s insistent pushing. He perched his feet on the lip of the door opening, elbows balanced on his knees.

“Let me see your fucking feet, God. Jesus, Light, are you—are you fucking vaccinated, seriously. This isn’t funny.”

Light was smiling nonetheless. “If your constitution is so weak that you can barely give me a bouquet without throwing up, I’m not going to let you look at my feet right now.”

“Jesus Christ, are you okay? Did you—did you cut anything, did you run through any—”

“What do the red peonies mean?”

Aoi managed to rip his eyes from Light’s slender feet and saw his coy smile, and the whole world stopped.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered before he could stop himself.

Light cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, and his coy smile turned into an amused smirk. “Is that what they mean?”

“No, you—you _ass_ , I just—fuck, I haven’t seen you all this time, I just—I feel like I fucking forgot how fucking… you’re so… you’re fucking gorgeous. I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t—I know I should’ve—I don’t know why I didn’t—”

He swallowed when his words got ahead of him, running his hands through his hair.

“I just… I was in a bad… I’m _still_ in a bad place, to be fucking honest, I’m in the worst fucking place I’ve been in since I—since we—I just… I know that isn’t good enough, and it’s stupid, and I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t… I didn’t think you…”

He glanced at Light’s feet and winced.

“I didn’t think you’d fucking run after me for three blocks in your bare goddamn feet at midnight and I don’t know what the fuck I did to deserve you, and I don’t know what you did to deserve me. I’m sorry. I’m—I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

He picked up the bouquet of peonies off of the sidewalk and laid it in Light’s open hands.

“The red peonies mean devotion.”

As soon as Aoi’s hands left the bouquet, Light shifted them to balance in the crook of his elbow and reached up. He grabbed Aoi’s shirt in two fists and dragged him closer.

Aoi had forgotten how nice it was to kiss him, too.

He laid his hands on Light’s cheeks, but as their lips closed the first kiss and flowed into a second, he grew desperate for what he had been missing. His fingers traced down Light’s neck and shoulders, he kissed Light harder, further back, climbing over him in the car and cupping a hand behind his head to cushion it against the armrest, clenching fistfuls of his soft, ashy hair, kissing him not just on his lips, but his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his jaw, his neck—

“Please, Aoi, are you going to have your way with me in this car?” Light laughed, his shoulder jerking with a tickle as Aoi let out a breath on his neck.

“Fuck. You wanna do makeup sex?” Aoi huffed, raising his head. “I’m so fuckin’ down for makeup sex. Let’s go home and do makeup sex.”

“Clover’s home, dear.”

Aoi buried his face in Light’s chest and let out a groan of insurmountable agony.

“Quiet makeup sex,” Light bargained.

“ _Fine_.” He pecked Light on the tip of his nose before hopping back to his feet. “Buckle up. I’ll drive you home, babe.”

As soon as Clover saw the flowers in Light’s arms as the boys entered, she softened a little towards Aoi. She had heard them coming down the hall, their voices full of the cheer she was used to.

She softened even more when he laid apologetic eyes upon her and said, “Hey, sorry I’m a fucking asshole. I missed you.”

It was not that his apology had sold her, but because when he turned his face towards her, she noticed a bright red mark swelling on his cheek and realized he had already gotten exactly what she wanted to give him.

“Don’t do it again,” she snapped, and then she stormed up and tackled him with a little hug, which she shyly stomped away from, leaving Aoi’s heart quivering and warm.

He blinked himself out of his small daze when Light laid his arms on his shoulders from behind, holding him against his chest. “Are you feeling alright?” he murmured softly. “Your emotions have been a little volatile. It might be best for you to rest right now.”

Aoi felt his weight settle even deeper into Light as he expelled a long sigh. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re always right. You’re great, y’know.”

“Don’t forget your medicine.” Light kissed his hair and squeezed his shoulders before letting him go.

“I love you,” Aoi whispered under his breath.

Light turned his head with a frown.

“Nothing.”

They curled up in the same bed, and Aoi fell asleep faster and deeper than he had fallen for the past seventeen days, and when jetlag woke him at four-thirty in the morning, he stared at Light’s calm, angelic face and whispered it again and again, _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,_ until he had had his fill of words he did not yet have the courage to say louder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who made this possible. Squad goals tbh. I love you crazy kids.
> 
> And thanks to you, for reading!
> 
> (but if you're reading this that means that you read the AO3 version and that definitely means it's time for you to peek at the disaster that is the google doc it's a treasure and you probably won't regret it)
> 
>  
> 
> _Special AO3 Bonus:: Word Clouds!!_
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/76664043@N04/36015694600/in/album-72157683289583972/)  
>   
> The above is a word cloud of this entire story! You can go [here](https://flic.kr/p/WSzReJ) to view it larger and see some info on how it was made!  
> The below is a word cloud of the shenanigans we got up to in the comments of the google doc, if you're not up to reading that whole thing ;) Larger view and more info is [this other here](https://flic.kr/p/Wff3sV).
> 
>  
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/76664043@N04/35604436273/in/album-72157683289583972/)  
> 


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